Like many people, I want to do my job well, and part of my job includes helping produce my municipality’s tax bills, none the least of which are the 3rd Quarter Real Estate Tax Bills.

These tax bills are very important, because they are the first bills to include the new fiscal year’s property and personal property assessments. (See Real Estate Tax Bill and Personal Property Bill in Glossary: http://wp.me/PoVRi-1y )

You might ask what happened to the first and second quarter tax bills. Well, they are important, too, but those bills are estimates, based on what the actual fiscal year tax rate might be. The 3rd and 4th Q real estate bills contain the new property values.

The new tax rate has to be approved and then loaded into the tax collection system. Even with automation, a lot of data reconciliation takes place between the assessment and tax collection systems.

We do all this first on a test system, and produce PDF files of the bills; a final check is made; and then we produce the bills on the production system. Even at thirty-five pages a minute, printed on both sides, it takes a long time to print the tax bills.

All 14,000 plus real-estate and personal property bills are printed in sorted order, and all addresses that can be are certified and barcoded to save postage. Then the USPS picks up umpteen trays of bills at our town hall when all the bills are printed.

Even if you hate taxes, think of your streets being repaired and good schools, and it seems easier to take.